Arran of the Bens, The Glens and the BraveChapter XV. Somerled, the Hammer of the Norsemen

If Edward I. was, as he himself said, the
hammer of the Scots, Somerled was certainly the hammer of the
Norsemen. Justice has hardly yet been done to the great work he
did in putting an end to the encroachments of the Norsemen on
the mainland of Scotland, and in expelling them from Loch-aber
and Argyll, and secondly in making the conquest of the isles of
Arran and Bute by David, who followed his lead, permanent and
successful. His alliance with the daughter of the Norse leader
Olave, king of the Isles, was another instance of the
statesmanlike policy of the greatest of the old Highland chiefs.
He alone it was who made it possible for the later Scottish
kings to obtain a foothold in the west, where danger had
threatened for so many centuries from the overwhelming sea power
of Norway. His conquests made in Argyll, on the mainland, far
more than the desultory victories of the Scottish kings, made a
united Scotland possible. The help afforded to Bruce by
Somerled's grandson, Angus Oig of Kintyre, in the darkest hour
of his fortunes, again, made it possible for that king, with a
fuller knowledge and wider perspective than were possible to
Somerled, to build permanently upon these great beginnings. As
the authors of The History of the Clan Donald say—

"Somerled was more than a warrior. He possessed not only the
courage and dash which are associated with the Celtic character;
he had the organising brain, the fertile resource, the art not
only of winning battles, but of turning them to account; that
sovereign faculty of commanding the respect and allegiance of
men which marks the true king. Without the possession of this
imperial capacity he could never, in the face of such tremendous
odds, have wrested the sovereignty of the Gael from his
hereditary foes, and handed it to the Clan Cholla to be their
inheritance for hundreds of years. He was the instrument by
which the position, the power, the language of the Gael were
saved from being overwhelmed by Teutonic influence, and Celtic
culture and tradition received a new lease of life. He founded a
family which played no ignoble part in Scottish history. If our
faith in the principle of heredity is sometimes shaken by
degenerate sons of noble sires, when the last links of a line of
long ago prove unworthy heirs of a great past, our faith is
confirmed in it by the line of Princes that sat upon the Island
throne, who as a race were stamped with the heroic qualities
which characterised the son of Gillibride. Somerled's life
struggle had been with the power of the Norseman, whose sun in
the Isles he saw on the eve of setting. But he met his tragic
fate in conflict with another and more formidable set of forces.
This was the contest which Somerled bequeathed as a legacy to
his successors. It was theirs to be the leading spirits in the
resistance of the Gaelic race, language, and social life, to the
new and advancing order which was already moulding into an
organic unity the various nationalities of Scotland— the
ever-increasing, ever-extending power of feudal institutions."

According to Hugh Macdonald's MS. Somerled was a "well-tempered
man, in body shapely, of a fair piercing eye, of middle stature,
and of quick discernment." His leadership was entirely
successful, and his victory was, as Gregory puts it, "the
beginning of the ruin of the Norse Kingdom of the Isles." The
Gaels from all parts crowded to his banner, and he wrested
Argyll and Lochaber from the grip of the Norsemen. And there, in
this land of grey hills and green waters, he "made a realm and
reigned."

In the Book of Ballymote Somhairle's
pedigree is given as "Somerled, son of Gille-brigde, son of
Gilliadamnain, son of Solaimh, son of Imergi." But the Book of
Clanranald takes us back several steps further. It gives "Somerled,
son of Giollabride, son of Giollia-damnain, son of Solomh, son
of Mearghach or Imergi, son of Suibhne, son of Niallghus, son of
Gothfruigh, son of Fearghus, of the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin."

There can be no doubt that the success of Somerled in clearing
the Norsemen out of "the western side of Alban, except the
islands of the Finlochlann, called Innisgall," as the Book of
Clanranald puts it, relieved the anxieties of the Scottish King
David, who was unable to cope with the great power of the
Norwegians on his coasts, and doubtless felt that their
encroachments on the mainland were a still more serious menace
to his kingdom. He, however, took heart and followed Somerled's
victory by capturing from the Norsemen the islands of Arran and
Bute in 1135, some two years later. These he conferred upon the
victorious Somhairle, and allowed him to annex them to the
"Kingdom of Argyll," of which he was, it is generally admitted,
the hereditary king or chief. By this statesmanlike policy of
David the kingdom of the Southern Hebrides became a kind of
buffer state between the kingdom of Alban and the Norse Vikings
of the Northern or Outer Hebrides and Orkney. It also healed the
old quarrel between the descendants of Malcolm, who had made
alliance with Magnus Barefoot, that arch enemy of the Innse
Gall, and at the same time split any minor alliances that might
have existed between the Gaels and the Norse Vikings.

Somerled further strengthened his hold on the Isles, about the
year 1140, by marrying Ragnhilda, the daughter of Olave the Red,
and sister of Godred, whose harsh and oppressive rule had been
the cause of the widespread revolt in which Somhairle had found
his great opportunity. Godred soon saw that his enemy was like
to crush him out of the rest of the Hebrides, for Somerled in
1156 joined with Thorfinn, a Manx chief, in a plot to place
Dugall, a mere child, son of Somerled and Ragnhilda, on the
throne of the Isles. Godred heard of the plot, and sailed from
Man with a fleet to meet Somerled, who with eighty ships was
waiting for him. A terrific battle took place, which, at the end
of a long day, found the combatants still determined and
unbeaten. Having tasted the quality of his great rival, Godred
was glad to make terms by which all the islands south of the
point of Ardnamurchan, of course including Kintyre, always
regarded as an island, were ceded to Somerled, or rather to his
son Dugall; while Godred kept for himself Man, Skye, Coll, Tiree,
and the Long Island. Mr. Dugald Mitchell suggests that a
probable result of this arrangement was an exodus of the purely
Norse population from the south islands, and of the purely
Keltic portion of the population of the northern islands, which
remained under Norwegian rule till a hundred years later. In
1156 there seems to have been another quarrel between Godred and
Somerled, who invaded Man with his fleet and added it to his
dominions. Godred fled to Norway, where he remained till
Somerled's death eight years later. In 1159 the peace was made
between the King of Scotland and Somerled, which resulted in the
drawing up of the famous treaty of that date, held to be of so
much importance that it formed an epoch for the dating of
Scottish charters.

In 1164 Somerled had again fallen out with
the Scottish monarch, for whose kingdom he had done so much. His
object was, it is said, to make himself king of all Scotland. Be
this as it may, he sailed up the Clyde with a fleet of one
hundred and sixty ships and a force of Scots from Ireland. He
landed, according to tradition, at Renfrew, and Gregory thinks
the old story is correct which states that he was there murdered
in his tent by one of his own followers in whom he placed
confidence. His son Gillecallum was also slain, and his men
returned to the Isles. His body was taken to Saddell, in Kintyre,
where his son Ragnald built the monastery of which the remains
still stand, and endowed it with lands at Boltefean, in Kintyre,
and Shisken in Arran.

So died the man who
preserved the identity of the Gaels in the western Highlands and
the islands of Innse Gall, and who put a stop for ever to the
encroachments of the Norwegians on the mainland of Scotland.
For, though there were subsequent attacks till the time of
Alexander III., no acre of Scottish ground ever again knew a
Norwegian owner, and no foothold of any permanence was again
obtained even amongst the islands. Only the Orkneys and
Shetlands, which never had at any time belonged to the Scottish
kings, remained under Norse rule till their cession to Scotland
in 1564.

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